This has been the summer of the movie. The girls saw the requisite new releases, Over the Hedge and Cars. We also saw lots of kid film festival reruns–Wallace and Gromit, March of the Penguins, Shrek, Nanny McPhee, Jimmy Neutron, and many more. We took in at least one movie a week, sometimes two. Slipping out of the triple digit heat and into the air conditioned world of cinema has been our favorite retreat now that both girls are old enough to sit still.

This week definitely got off schedule. Our pick for Tuesday, Curious George, got filled up and we were sent to Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Five minutes from the end, the screen filled with an image of melting celluloid and the movie stopped. We didn’t get to see the rest.

Today we headed out early to ensure a seat. Realizing the overwhelming popularity of the inquisitive monkey, Regal Westgate added a second screen. We found a seat easily and the girls laughed more than at any movie this summer. The little jungle ape was infectiously cute. As the credits came up, Elizabeth, the younger, slapped her hands against the red armrest and said, “Well that’s it. Summer’s last movie!” She hopped up and we followed her through the crowd out into the hall.

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 had not let out yet. “Should we sneak in and see the end?” I asked Emily. She nodded. We slipped into the theater and stood by the wall. The scenes splashing across the screen were only seconds before the point it had cut off on Tuesday.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m a sap. I don’t think we’ve watched a summer movie yet that didn’t make me cry. But the end to Cheaper 2–Good Lord. I’m bawling. Steve Martin gets his first grandchild, the big speech about perfect parents not exisiting, but many greats ones. The last summer at Lake Winetka and the first baby. It’s too much.

We walk out of the cold and into the hot sun. Both girls take a hand as we cross the busy parking lot, leaving behind the smell of popcorn for the hazy heat of asphalt crisscrossed with fading yellow stripes. I realize that so many of their firsts are behind them–first baths, first tooth, first steps, first day of school. We have more to go, surely, but at what point does the seesaw tip the other way, when you have more lasts than firsts? When does a parent look at a child and realize–they’ve grown up. They’re leaving. They’re leading their own lives.

We got to the car and Emily kept my hand even though little Elizabeth dropped hers and leaned against the car with an exhausted sigh. “Mama?” Emily said. “Didn’t we get just a little more summer movie? We thought we were done but we got just a little bit more.”

I held her still, hoping to imprint the way such a small hand feels in my bigger, not quite yet old one. “That’s right, Emily. We did.”

Emily whistled in her self conscious way, knowing she’d made some symbolic point–bonus for proving Elizabeth wrong. How often do we get one last little taste of something that is ending? It’s like the son coming back out the airport tunnel for one more quick hug. Or the unexpected chance to stop back by your grandparents’ house before it is sold, months after they leave it empty.

A movie isn’t a death. A snippet of a story isn’t the return of lost time. But sometimes little things remind you of big ones–that everything about our lives is finite, mommies only get so long to hold their children in their lap, and that popcorn summers all too quickly give way to school days, education, maturity, and the empty nest.

I grew up a die-hard patriot. Be true to the red, white and blue. Let freedom ring. Be all that you can be. God bless America!

I maintained a relatively untarnished view of our country through Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Hostages. Inflation. Gulf War. Stain on a Dress.

September 11 found me riding the wave of refreshed national pride like most every other American. Bound by fear and anger and revulsion, United We Stood, singing Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.

Then came W. I’m embarrassed by my country now. I sometimes wish to do as my good friend from college has done and just leave, forever, living in other countries as a closet American claiming to be Canadian. The ultimate act of screw-this-hypocrisy.

But here I am, in W’s own home state, raising two kids and not sure what to say to them exactly. I liked the optimistic buoyancy of my youthful patriotism, and it still seems best to infuse them with it. As we decorated scooters yesterday, I thought of this, but still, even as opportunities arose to explain about national pride and history, I let them slide by.

I need not have worried. Some things come with childhood–innocence, joy, believing in the good in things, and patriotism for patriotism’s sake. Today Elizabeth found a forgotten flag under a chair and said, “Mama, this one fell off my scooter!”

I told her, “No, it’s an extra. You can keep it.”

She ran to the front door and struggled to unlock it.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I have to see if it still waves!”

“Waves?” I asked her, opening the door.

“Yes! Over the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

I watched her, standing framed by the entry and looking out in the street, holding up her flag to the blinding light of the noonday sun, the day after North Korea tested its long-range missiles, notably long enough to reach the US, on a national holiday, just to be provocative.

There seems always a place for that baseline of patriotism, even when the government runs amok, and informed thoughtful citizens can barely stand to read the newspaper to see what atrocity has been wrought under the guise of nationalism. She doesn’t need to know that, not yet. Nor of her enemies, enemies of the state, who plan their terror or their futures as players in an international stage for power.

She just needs to know where she’s from, that it can get better, and no matter the problem, we can (2004 notwithstanding) get rid of it in about four years because that is how democracy works. How America works.